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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696310">No Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karen_Hart/pseuds/Karen_Hart'>Karen_Hart</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Xenosaga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Loneliness, POV Second Person, Rejection, Self-Doubt, gnosis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:54:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>786</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696310</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karen_Hart/pseuds/Karen_Hart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the birth and death of an existence who would reject to avoid rejection.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>No Place</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Because I just wanted to write SOMETHING new.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center"><p>
    <b>No Place</b>

</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>By Karen Hart</p></div></div>It's too bright here.<p>You used to care about other things—important things—but now you can't remember what any of them were.  Or should that be ‘are’?  You don't know anymore.</p>
<p>You.  There used to be a ‘you’ before, didn't there?  Who were you?  You have flashes of memories—waiting in line, a blond man in the apartment next to yours, nanotreatment bills, the new puppy tearing up your jacket.  None of them mean anything.  Maybe these aren't your memories.</p>
<p>Maybe there wasn't a you before now.  Maybe this place of brightness and strangeness is your genesis.</p>
<p>For reasons you can't explain you feel a need to define things in concrete terms.  You want to call the space you're in a room.  You want to say there's a perfect sphere of white light in the center.  Other, smaller lights demand you define them in turn.</p>
<p>If you had a heart it would be pounding.  This place isn't your beginning but your end.  You've been watching the lights for a while now.  They swirl and swoop before merging with the central sphere.  There's almost a smug satisfaction about the whole thing.</p>
<p>You've never really thought before about how small you really are.  Oh, sure, you know you're insignificant against a mountain or an ocean or a planet.  But against other people?  Now the lack is pitifully obvious.</p>
<p>They're around you still.  Their numbers never decrease.  They're secure in the knowledge the center mass is <i>their</i> place, <i>their</i> refuge.  You have no business being here.  You are not light.  You are not ‘of’ them.</p>
<p>You want to go back.  There is no back for you to go to.  You can't even turn around.</p>
<p>Terror grips you.  That dreadful sphere draws you closer.  You beg.  You can see there is no place for you in that central brightness.  You would be a stain.</p>
<p>Your future looms before you.  You see yourself merging, you see the blemish of your existence in the perfect light, you see the cosmic offense of your actions.  Shame is a familiar feeling.</p>
<p>You must not be drawn in.  You know there is no place for you there.</p>
<p>All you have left is resistance.  There's no back or outside in this place, only forward and in.  In.  In your mind.  In your self.  In the only place it's safe because no one can follow you.</p>
<p>The light fades.  It's cool here in this empty place.  You've been here many times before.  There's only as much light as you need.</p>
<p>It's a prison but you don't care.  The walls keep you safe.  It's a long way to the top.  They can't get to you here.</p>
<p>You’re not sure if time passes.  You think it does.  You feel the walls begin to contract around you.  You're dimly aware that the roof of your cell collapsed on you some time ago.  Your prison is now your grave.  Your real grave.</p>
<p>There is almost nothing left.  Yet you persist in existing.  There is no reason for this.  There doesn't need to be.  Just so long as it's only you.</p>
<p>The dark and the silence are enough to keep you content.  Then you feel it.</p>
<p>There is another, in a prison like yours.</p>
<p>There shouldn't be anyone like you.  You are the only you.  Rage courses through you.  Your comfortable grave is no longer enough to hold you.  You forgot about the light.  It defines agony.  You don't care.  You just want to stop the other you.</p>
<p>Suddenly it has become impossible to contain you.  You shred through the soap bubble of reality as if it were hardly there at all.</p>
<p>Where is this other you?  Suddenly you feel overwhelmed.  You can find no trace of the original offense, only a multitude of echoes.  You want to go back to your hole.  You can't, not until you stop feeling them.</p>
<p>You lunge, screaming, and you hope it's enough to finally dull sensation.  It's not.  It only amplifies the insult.  You try again and again.</p>
<p>There's no controlling yourself anymore.  What you do now can hardly even be termed ‘instinct’.  You can no longer recall what painlessness was like, or if you ever knew it.  All you have now are anger and violence.</p>
<p>You screech in fury and relief when the awful hot iridescence touches you.  At last, <i>at last</i>, you can have an ending.  Cessation.  You want to weep.  You want to laugh.  It's taken you until now to realize that you <i>are</i> tears.</p>
<p>Bits of you are cleaved from your body.  You've never been happier.</p>
<p>When the strange cold woman eventually severs the ‘purpose’ from the ‘you’, you wonder how to say ‘thank you’.</p>
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